Digitising the SP-SC Survey

For the last few weeks, the ESS team has been thinking about how to set up the SP-SC survey in an online format, in the most engaging, simple and secure way possible. This has come through a request from the groups (particularly Wuthathi) and from GBRF, who have emphasized the importance of having the survey in a digital, accessible and secure format. 

We have decided to implement the survey in two ways:

• Firstly by integrating it into our mobile and remote data collection tools (which uses a software platform called Fulcrum) so that the survey may be delivered in remote environments that are outside of an internet connection. This will be tested by Yodie, when she visits Wuthathi community members on country and in the Torres Strait. It will enable her to conduct a verbal survey with TOs while using a tablet to record responses. 
• Secondly, we have implemented the survey within each of the groups' information management systems. This is set up as a form that can be accessed from within each groups system, whereby the survey responses are protected within the system. This protection of information was an important consideration in the design, whereby a public facing and open access web-survey (using google or survey-monkey, would not automatically protect the data each survey produces.

Learning note:

This was a challenging design problem and involved some engineering of the form structure, so that it could fit such a long survey into a more manageable size. Usually, the forms used to record data in our systems have no more than 15-20 fields, through which they capture tailored information. This survey, with 100+ fields therefore required some crafty design, which we managed and look forward to testing when the surveys are delivered with communities in the coming months.